Linda Harrison:

Yes, so I’m Linda Harrison. I’ve been at Acxiom a very long time. I’m a senior director of data strategy and I’d lead a couple of different teams, an analytics team, an email team, and a data strategy team. So I like to do a little bit of everything across Acxiom data.

Lorel Wilhelm:

We’re glad you do. Richard, give us a snapshot of your background and what’s led you to your current role at Acxiom.

Richard Mitchell:

Hey Lorel, thanks for having me here. So I am one of Acxiom’s global data subject matter experts. So I work across all of Acxiom’s global data. I’ve been at Acxiom for… Coming up to 15 years now. I was brought in as a geospatial analyst as part of the UK team as they look to expand that side of the business. I know we’re going to go into that in some more detail later. That role kind of evolved into a more traditional statistician role, so building metal segmentations and so on. And then I decided that I wanted to move more into the client-facing side of the business, so an opportunity to come up as a subject matter expert to support the UK business. And I moved over there to support InfoBase and our various other products as part of the UK data set. And I did that for a few years. And then finally I moved over to Global Data, which again, as I say is supporting all of our multiple markets that sit outside of the US. So I’ve been doing that for about three and a half years now.

Lorel Wilhelm:

That’s awesome. Well, I cannot think of two better people to discuss this topic because you’ve just got loads of experience. And given that experience, especially with your statistics background, what are some of the ways that you’ve seen or how have you seen the importance of data and analytics shift in the work that we do for our clients?

Richard Mitchell:

To me, there’s always change and flux within the data and analytics world. I think the one thing that remains stable is the fundamentally importance of using data and analytics to help our clients get most out of their resources. So it’s always been vital to use data in an intelligent way. The world and technology continues to evolve at a rapid rate and we need to be at the forefront of this change. So there’s no doubt that the sheer quantity of data and intelligence that is out there and available to clients is growing at staggering speed. So not only do businesses have to deal with evolving consumer behavior trends, but they need to respond to the political realities, COVID, homework, and so on. But also from the other side, the new cook list feature. So clients are definitely beginning to understand how vital it’s to get the most out of their own first-party data and to use that in an intelligent way.

So we are really seeing first-party data take center stage. So the work we do and the strategies that sort of surround making best use of customers’ data is key at the moment. I am seeing a shift in the attitude of clients to try and grow that first-party data and whilst they do that, make better use of what they have. So that might mean using first-party seed audiences for creation of lookalikes rather than relying completely on a third-party data set, augmenting current customers to tease out better insights, creating segments that can be used across the business. So a combination of all of those factors can be hugely beneficial to allow more intelligent decisions to be made. And along with the tightening of the privacy laws in most markets, again, which we’re going to go into a lot more detail a little bit later, and a move to more geo-based solutions, that means that Acxiom and our customers really need to work harder with the data that they have. So we’re seeing a lot more of pooling on that smaller amount of resources.

Lorel Wilhelm:

It’s really interesting because this focus on first-party data from what I hear, and Linda, I’d be curious about your thoughts on it as well. That seems to be a fairly universal theme for all the reasons you just mentioned, Richard, across every market just feels like things are definitely shifting in that direction. So one thing I’d love for us to talk about and just put a standing question out for both of you as you’re thinking about our discussion today, where do you see that interplay between first party and third party? You already brought it up, Richard, with the shift in brands moving from a third-party focus to a first-party focus. So just something standing question as we dive into the different topics that we’ve got on our list today. I’d love your thoughts on that because it definitely seems to be a recurring theme from what I can tell.

Linda Harrison:

So from my point of view, we’re having more people use even smaller data sets that they have in-house of hand-raisers or purchasers, converters to build a custom model. They’re much less likely to want to use just straight third-party data to inform their campaign. They want to build a custom model, a lookalike model of some type, and then it uses third-party data to build that model. But they’re using the seed or the kernel of people that have done something that they specifically have worked with.

Richard Mitchell:

And just to reiterate that, again, as Linda says, previously in the past where we might have seen customers think, “Well, I haven’t got enough data to be of any use.” We’re saying, well maybe my data set is small. It might not be ideal, but actually, there’s probably still a lot of insight into that.

Linda Harrison:

And I’m seeing really good results with models that are based off of a smaller seed file. It might only be 5,000 records, but we’re able to smooth out the data and get rid of the oddballs like me on either side of the data set. So everybody else in the campaign or the conversion file is 18 to 25 and there I am on the high end, they’ll say, “Well let’s just forget about her. She doesn’t count really. She’s an outlier.” And we will build the model off of the kernel of truth to find more that really looks like my customer base.

Lorel Wilhelm:

I love that we’re employing essentially very similar techniques and addressing really similar challenges in the various markets that we all work in. But I’m curious, Richard, what are some of the most important global markets for the advertisers and agencies that we work with?

Richard Mitchell:

Yeah, this tends to be very, very client specific. I speak to a whole range of customers and prospects and I see everything from customers saying, “I want data and I want prospects in these 50 markets.” “We’ve got a presence there, let’s see if we can find data there. Let’s see if we can prospect to these people. Tell me more about my customers in there.” But I’m also seeing a lot more of customers saying, “Okay, I’ve got this data and this solution in the US. Let me see if I can duplicate that in say Canada or Mexico.” So particularly in the US, I’m seeing a lot of… I’ve got data and an identity solution. Let’s do a repeat, let’s do a rip and repeat of this in say Canada, which is sometimes can be difficult because there’s an expectation that what we can do in the US, we can do in Canada and privacy regulations and data availability and so on are very, very, very different.

So it can be a real mix of the two. So in Europe, we are still seeing a big focus on the so-called Big Five. So UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain. So they continue to be the big ones that the clients in Europe go after. There’s some interesting growing markets in Europe, the likes of Poland, and places in Eastern Europe where the marketing ecosystem is not as advanced as it is in some other markets. But equally, I’m also seeing traditionally US clients saying, “We’ve had a lot of success in the US. Can we repeat that in UK or Germany?” And likewise, maybe there’s an untapped market the other way. So UK customers say, “We’ve got data in the US. We want to grow in the US. Let’s see if we can repeat our success over there.”

Linda Harrison:

So give us a quick overview of the privacy issues between the EU and the US.

Richard Mitchell:

Sure, Linda, and I’m glad you said quick because we could probably feel a lot of time with this. So it’s been five years now since GDPR and while I was doing a little bit of research for this podcast, I’ve realized that it’s actually five years today. So it’s a happy anniversary from when we are recording the podcast. So obviously that’s widely recognized as the world’s strongest set of data protection rules. So it continues to be the guiding principles in Europe and it’s served as a model for privacy protection in other jurisdictions as well. So the lights of Brazil are looking to GDPR and saying, “How can we replicate that in our market?” The basic principles are to give individuals more control of their personal data and it’s forced companies to rethink about how they ensure data privacy. There’s seven key principles of GDP.

I’m not going to go into those, but really it’s based around how data should be processed and used. So we shouldn’t mislead consumers on the use of their data and when we have data, we need to store it in a secure and time-limited manner. Most of all companies need to be accountable for how they use customers’ data. So GDPR is geared towards a right to privacy. The US has a slightly different approach to data protection. Instead of them formulating this one, all-encompassing regulation like GDPR, they implement sector-specific data protection laws and regulations that work together with state-level legislation, things like CCPA to safeguard Americans’ data. So the other main difference is GDPR is geared around a right to privacy, whereas US laws, generally speaking, are more focused around data security and the privacy language that they have in the US is dealt with separately with other privacy laws.

It’s also worth remembering, and I think sometimes people forget that GDPR is a framework that sits over the top of Europe. So there’s also national laws that we need to be abided by within Europe. So again, that perception is changing, but each EU market continues to have its own set of legislation and that means that a service that we may be able to offer in one European market we cannot necessarily offer in the other European market. For example, Germany’s privacy laws are quite different to the UK’s, are quite different to Spain’s. So there’s a lot to consider.

Linda Harrison:

That makes me happy that at least we’re not the only place that is really a hot mess that you’ve got that underlayer of hot messiness to go on as well.

Lorel Wilhelm:

I agree. I was thinking the same thing, Richard, when you mentioned the additional layer of the country-specific laws. It’s as you mentioned because the US approaches it typically more from a state-by-state level. We’re all in the same boat.

Richard Mitchell:

And there’s no doubt about that. Global data is complex and here at Acxiom, we try to help companies to navigate those difficulties and also to help manage the expectations. As I say, I quite often have conversations with customers who just want to repeat services in different markets and don’t understand that that’s most often not possible without change.

Lorel Wilhelm:

Yeah, for sure. I’d like to go back to something you mentioned when you were talking about your own career path, Rich, which was geo data. So I’m curious if you can just give us a quick intro for… If there’s anyone listening who’s not familiar with what geo-data is, and then also if you can help us understand, as we’ve mentioned, some count different countries of different types of data available. Why do we see that more prevalent in some markets versus others?

Richard Mitchell:

Yeah, great question. There’s normally several reasons for that. So geo-data is essentially data that’s aggregated at a certain level. So it could be a postcode or it could be ZIP+4, it could be some other geographic level. The first thing to consider is that data at a granular level, individual in a household doesn’t really exist at scale in some markets. So whilst we are really used to having granular data in markets like the US, the reality is that other markets, maybe the marketing ecosystem isn’t so advanced, the data just isn’t there. So when Acxiom go out to build a national data solution in a given market, we have a few things to consider. As I say, the first is that the data might not be there. There’s all sorts of reasons why. If you look at markets like the Middle East, you’ve got very transient populations.

So it’s very difficult to capture per people-based data and to build a reliable data spine of individuals. Sometimes it’s a market maturity thing and then obviously there’s the national regulations. So in markets like Spain, you’re not allowed to collect data and use it at an individual level in the way that we’re used to in the US. The other thing to consider is, “Can we find scale?” So when we’re building a solution in a market, we think, “We’ve got this wealth of information, we’ve found this data supplier, the data that they can supply is fantastic, but you’re only covering 20 or 30,000 people.” So that isn’t going to be a good enough scale for Acxiom. I mean when you think about things like data enrichment, so clients have an expectation when they deliver their data to us and we match the two data sets together that the match rate we achieve is going to be good, it’s going to be strong.

So you’ve only got a very small number of customers that you know about. Then the match rate’s obviously going to be very poor and that’s not going to help our customers. So we need to make sure that we’ve got scale. So we’ve got coverage across the market and are touched on it as well. But again, privacy compliance. Sometimes when we look out and we find potential partners to work with, they might have data then it does exist at scale. Unfortunately, they don’t pass our very strict privacy tests. So we are very much privacy first. So privacy, as we know, Acxiom is the foundation of everything we do and our customers want to know that when they license data from us or they use our data, it all meets the very highest of data and privacy standards.

So the good thing with geo-based data or aggregated data, it’s sometimes called is, it’s generally considered anonymous, so it isn’t subject to GDPR. So it doesn’t come with the difficulties we associate with personal data and it tends to be more widely available. So a lot of sensors type data and public data is collected at a geographic level so we can work with those different sources. So it can still offer great insight if you’ve got smaller geos. That’s still great insight and we’ve got some examples of that that I’ll go into a little bit later.

Lorel Wilhelm:

Perfect. Thank you for that. And it’s interesting because you brought up an important point that sometimes the data’s just simply not available. And it’s interesting because there are some countries that have a very large population and yet it can be very difficult to have a data-driven marketing approach. I guess, you’ve begun to touch on that, why we see that. Do you have any examples or anything that you’d like to maybe do a double-click on in this idea of why there’s not always this connect between a large population and a large data set?

Richard Mitchell:

Yeah, sure. It normally comes down to a combination of the things I’ve just mentioned. Unfortunately, highly populated markets don’t necessarily translate to mature markets from a data perspective. I guess some of the examples are markets in Africa where we’ve seen rapid population growth, particularly over the last 10 or 15 years. The marketing landscape really hasn’t had a chance to fully establish itself. So again, in those markets, whilst there’s potentially 100 or 200 million people living in some of the nations in Africa, we don’t really have enough data or data suppliers or people that collect data in the way that we can make best use of it. And while it’s true that businesses are becoming more and more globally in attitude, there is still a tendency for focus to be on the core markets, experiences with some clients tends to be quite new. So you still got some very established clients that are still just venturing into multiple markets at the moment. And generally, those markets will be focused on the ones I mentioned earlier. So the bigger markets in North America, Europe, and potentially Australasia.

Linda Harrison:

Yeah, I’ve seen Brazil, which is a huge country, well populated, pretty mature from marketing purposes, but part of it’s the language barrier there that it’s Portuguese and that I’ve had trouble with some digital campaigns to get off the ground because of that. Right. That it’s just a unique market area for language.

Richard Mitchell:

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s something we haven’t touched on yet is markets where there are multiple languages. Even Canada, as we know, there’s quite a large French-speaking population in Canada. So there’s definitely some of the difficulties we have to overcome.

Linda Harrison:

It seems like the only constant in global data is change. Would you agree to that?

Richard Mitchell:

Absolutely, yep. Change is definitely the constant in global data. So I mean we are continually reviewing our global data offerings in order to ensure that they are privacy compliant in a world where it is becoming increasingly challenging to work with third-party data. So new national and international laws seem to be passed regularly and our privacy team have to be on top of these changes to make sure that we’re offering our clients the very best data that exists out there. I’d say recently we’ve gone through a period where we’ve put greater focus on our core markets, where we see greater demand, the likes of Canada, Mexico, France, Australia. As I mentioned earlier, whilst it is easily important for our clients that we maintain this wide remit of markets, we do have to be aware that the majority of our demand does come from a smaller subset of those. So we have to be very reactive.

Lorel Wilhelm:

Yeah. That makes sense. I mean it just makes sense even intuitively. I would love to hear from both of you some of your favorite success stories that you have seen in your interactions with clients, either in a unique data type that was used for a campaign, or maybe it was a new or a different market, or just… What are some of the successes that you’ve seen in your interactions with clients as they have set out to activate some of these campaigns across borders or in a unique and different market?

Linda Harrison:

Well, Richard and I worked together on a Netherlands campaign for a digital offering. So that’s a little unique. It’s not a market that comes up a lot for me and to be digital on top of it added that next layer. And we built a custom model. So I would say yes in Dutch, but I don’t know how.

Lorel Wilhelm:

I think it’s the same as German, isn’t it?

Linda Harrison:

Oh yeah, probably.

Richard Mitchell:

If it’s okay, I’m going to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about some of the changes that have happened in the UK where we’ve moved to a geo-based solution very, very recently and it’s been a big success. When we think of traditional geographic data, which is where a lot of our global data sits, we often think of location planning, geospatial analysis, things like that. But over the last 12 months, our UK solution has moved completely to a geo-based solution. So we’ve sort of foreseen that there’s privacy headwinds on the way, and we have moved away from an individual-level data set that we don’t have anymore in the UK to one at a cohort level. So cohorts, or Microsoft as we call them, which is an approach we use in Germany as well as the UK take similar residential addresses and they group them together through statistical analysis.

So they’re really an intelligent version of a UK postcode or a US ZIP+4. It’s basically geo-data at its very best. So it’s maintaining all that customer insight to drive the marketing experiences while using personal data in the way that our customers will probably like. So it’s meaningful, it’s respectful, it’s GDPR-compliant, and so on. So we made that change within the last 12 months. Obviously, when we announced we were doing that, there was some concern from our clients, “You’re taking away individual-level data and we are going to be left with this cohort-level data.” So we made the change gradually over about the 12 to 18-month period. We allowed a lot of time for testing, but what we found was actually for the majority of our clients, and there’s over 90% of them during the testing phase of that, the insight and the strength of the data was actually maintained. So we continued to renew contracts. So it was a really, really big success story in the UK and I can really see most global markets going that way over the next 10 to 15 years.

Linda Harrison:

That must have been very stressful, but also gave you a lot of case study-type information to get the next one to make the move over. Once you get a couple under your belt and show that this geo-level information can really drive the campaign, you’re golden, right? It’s just getting the first couple done.

Richard Mitchell:

Exactly that. Yeah, and as I say, there was nervousness amongst the team here at Acxiom UK as well as the clients as well, because when you’re building a product, something that’s so new, so new to the market, you never know 100% whether how it’s going to go down with the clients. And even though statistically we knew we were doing a good job, what’s the reaction going to be like? And so we’ve been absolutely thrilled with how it’s gone down in the market.

Linda Harrison:

And now your privacy protected, right, you’ve made that leap and you’re ready to go to the next one. What case studies would you want to talk about? Unique market areas or unique campaigns that you’ve done? How about automaker in Canada that we worked on? So we built a whole segmentation system for together, Richard and I, again, we like to pair up, worked on a segmentation system for Canada for an automaker, and it helps them reach out to not only their customers but prospects and some of that census level data in Canada is really rich. It had rather odd information like drinking beer and getting your brake serviced at a tree-shaved mechanic. It’s like the guy down the street that does your work. So it had some really rich data, and I think that’s true in other markets where there’s some rather information that’s age, income, things like that. But there’s always that nugget that sets it apart. And that’s what we want to find.

Richard Mitchell:

We always try in other markets to have the core demographic data, your ages, your income presence of children, those things that we know are the fundamentals for our customers. But where other data is available, we take it and we run with it and we put it out there and we see… As we know, when you’re building models, you never really know what’s going to provide insight. You never really know what’s going to be relevant until you’ve done the statistical analysis on it.

Lorel Wilhelm:

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, you guys, first of all, I love that I get to be a part of the Richard and Linda show because I did not know prior to this podcast that you have worked together on so many campaigns and efforts. So thank you for letting me tag along today. And this is a topic that I think we could talk about for hours and hours and only begin to scratch the surface. But knowing that we tried to keep these under 30 minutes, let’s go ahead and wrap up today’s conversation and maybe we’ll have a part two and we’ll do it all in Dutch or we can try anyway. And apologies to all the Dutch speakers in our audience because I’m sure we’ll butcher it. But just to wrap up on a fun note. So Richard, as a member of the Commonwealth, so did you have a favorite takeaway from the recent coronation of King Charles?

Richard Mitchell:

The Royal family can be very, very divisive issue in the UK. I think when I viewed the Coronation, it was more for a part of history perspective. And I think most of my friends and my family were similar. Personally, I don’t have a particularly strong opinion. I really like the pageantry and the tradition. I think as a country we do that really, really well. And it is a first in most people’s lifetime. Most people haven’t seen a coronation before, so that was very nice. But we’ve had a very busy time with the royal family recently. We’ve had their platinum glee, obviously the death of the queen, the coronation, so on. So I don’t know whether there’s potentially a little bit of a royal family fatigue creeping amongst the UK population at the moment. So yeah, extra public holidays… We’re always grateful for those. So that’s been lovely. But yeah, enjoyed the coronation, but could probably take it or leave it. And what about yourself, Lorel, Linda?

Lorel Wilhelm:

Huh. So I have to admit that, like you, it’s just a bit of history and so it’s impressive to see the pageantry, the crown that has been used in coronation since whatever the 1200s. I don’t even remember, but comments like that. Yes, I hear what you’re saying. And there have been so many shows how Netflix makes a ton of money off the royal family and I watch them all. So I have to admit, I do enjoy that. So for me, it was looking at the pictures, kind of the who’s who in the audience who was actually able to attend the coronation. What about you, Linda?

Linda Harrison:

I like the pomp and circumstance a little bit, right? The pageantry of it all. Just seeing it all happen is pleasant. But it didn’t keep me glued to the TV for hours.

Lorel Wilhelm:

No. However, I would have been very happy to celebrate together with our brothers and sisters across the pond with an extra public holiday. I don’t think anybody would’ve been upset about that. All right, both of you, thank you so much for your time today for the conversation. I learned a lot and I hope that our listeners did too. So to all our listeners, I hope you also enjoyed this conversation and learned quite a bit. You can find all of our Data Guru episodes on your favorite podcast player or on acxiom.com. And thank you both so much and talk to you soon.